This past week was a busy one! Ajoke and I reached out to a bunch of faculty members and staged a booki-like writing sprint (using google docs so it was only booki-like) monday night from 11 PM -1 AM. You can see the results of our labor here: HIA’s Proposal for MIT- Connecting Science & Opinion @MIT. Now we are solidifying plans for the Tech Infographic Workshop scheduled for this Friday 6-7 PM room TBD.

The videos that I have from Friday the 13th’s WakeUP event are now posted! I have to get the last few videos that are out there and then pursue loading these and pictures taken during the event onto the Student’s Occupy Boston site which I hope will continue to be the place where Occupy student groups are using to organize. I’ll be able to figure this out on Wednesday.

It’s a little late, but here’s a writeup of the notes on the consensus project workshop I ran with NASCO in Austin, TX.  Good times!

Upload was easy with a USB cable. But: the videos were all rotated 90 degrees, and I don’t know of an easy way to fix that!

Song Interview      ||    Adwoa Interview

My SD card reader gave me problems earlier this week because my Mac did not recognize it. Fortunately, I was finally able to transfer the video files and temporarily get my card reader to work with my Mac after I had a friend in SIPB find the reader via the terminal of the Dell Athena computer. Unfortunately, after unplugging and replugging the device into my Mac my computer has stopped recognizing it.

I played more with my phone’s Bluetooth too and was able to pair my phone and computer; however, the two computers that I tried reported that my data service must not allow the needed connection- hmmm.

In last Friday’s class we talked about Jenny’s plans for her work with IBA. This led to us all doing some quick phone reporting.

I had some problems loading video off of my phone. I tried loading using email which could not take such a large file, the microSD reader I own, and bluetooth. However, I was able to load the image that I took of Song.

TOPIC: Codesign || What is it and why are we learning about it?

Rogelio and I partnered to do an interview of codesign. Hope you enjoy.

The video I created a youtube, but for the pictures and audio I did something a little different. I utilized picasa to turn the audio and visuals into a mini video.

Unfortunately I am not able to add any of those media pieces here due to technical issues… So, I created a blogger account and was able to post them there.

Check out the entry:

http://codesignlearning.blogspot.com/2012/05/interview-thoughts-on-codesign.html 

On Monday, April 16th (Patriot’s Day) I have my 2nd committee meeting with Omar, Rafael, and Alex. Unfortunately Carmen was not able to attend, but I will be connecting with her before week’s end to give her a brief. Below is the agenda:

• Welcome. below are the two new additions to the team
  *Rafael moved to the area in 1981. He is an artist who had his first exhibit at Villa Victoria’s art gallery
  *Alex moved to the area in the late ’70s. He first got involved with IBA when he was 19 in the youth group. He is now about 38 and is still working with IBA.
• Review Mtg Min from the previous cmte mtg. you can find the link to the note by going to this link http://web.mit.edu/jennylb/Public/
• Update on the Fellowship application
  *I have submitted an application and I am waiting to see if I will have summer funding for the summer.
• Recap of workshop 1
  *We had about 12-15 participants
  *We were able to do mini interviews with various people and collect footage about people’s experience and memories of the time they moved to the Villa, how they got involved with IBA, how they understand the past of the community, and how they see the future of the neighborhood
  *It’s time to look at some of the footage and at a very rough level edit it a bit to show at the next workshop
• Documentary discussion (audience, purpose, impact)
  *We kicked off an important conversation about who our audience is for the documentary so that we can identify the story we want to tell. This will help guide the characters need to elevate and highlight the story.
  *We identified two: 1-the Youth to understand their identity as Latinos in the US and 2-the community leaders interested in mobilizing their communities.
  *We also agreed that once we have our audience it is important to have a purpose to produce an impact that will also serve as a call to action. Having these elements worked out will make the project that much stronger and tighter.
• MOU review
  *We reviewed the vozmob MOU and ID’ed componenets that will be useful for our MOU
• Next workshop
  *We agreed to schedule early May
• Next steps
  *We are having another cmte mtg in two weeks from Apr 16
  *Complete MOU
  *Prepare for Worshop 2

Last week’s review of my project gave me a lot to think about. After noticing that I was up to be reviewed, the night before the review (my bad), I had a couple of watershed realizations.

1. Things do not have to take so long!

The research itself can be an action- Journalism and Media Production.

Media is pretty much Amazing. I’ve been saying HIA’s purpose is to support, connect, and bring visibility to MIT Undergrads engaged in service and advocacy. As Sasha told me at least 3 weeks ago- the easiest and really most impactful way to build visibility is to make media| take pictures, record video, post it where people can see.  BUT I felt uncomfortable just asking people to make media. I had been advised to make some prototypes and then get the ball rolling BUT I still felt weird just asking. After some mulling around and dabbling in other pursuits (the Infographic) it made sense to me. 

Action. I and some awesome volunteers Becky Hurwitz and Pablo Rey will be taking pictures at the WakeUp MIT event #wakeupMIT and posting them to the HIA site and hopefully the OccupyMIT site.  I am also going to make an effort to take video of the individuals that I invite to the Infographic Workshop- my next ToDo item.

2. We are initializing a structure

As usual some ‘amazingness’ came out of the idea of discussion that strengthened my understanding of how HIA’s campaign fits into the larger theory of campaigning and advocacy. I have now adopted efficiency as a facet of organizing that I am considering- NOT just in quickly creating media but in thinking about what MIT really needs. Something that is beautiful about MIT is that ppl are trail-blazers. But that doesn’t mean that we wouldn’t gain something from coming together instead of purely existing in the pockets that we choose to inhabit. 

Action. Include the discussion of efficiency in the Infographic Workshop.

UPDATE: I dropped by to the Tech office Sunday night. The editors and production team were really interested by the Infographic + Article! I got the chance to do some brainstorming with the Tech Team- going through my idea for the Workshop and getting some feedback about whether or not it was affective. The Workshop Google Doc is now shared with one of the Tech’s Prod Team members and I am set to send in a rough draft of the article tomorrow – some of the information in that article spawned from the advice that I received during class thanks rojelio .

• This Wednesday April 4th , the MIT members of the co-design team met with Cara at PPTV office. The goal of the meeting was to explain to Cara everything we did at workshop1 (mock workshop on Saturday March 31) and discuss what we will do next. One youth leader from PPTV, Nicole, also participated in the discussion.  She works with Cara as a community outreach coordinator.
• We, the MIT team, tried to map out the website based on our role-play in workshop 1. For more information about the workshop, please see our previous post  (http://codesign.mit.edu/2012/04/press-pass-tv-workshop-1/)
• What PPTV has done for the campaign and the website:
  • Cara told us the expectation to the website from PPTV’s side. Like “one of the things we want on the website is a list of guidelines – so connecting each guideline to a story”. She furthered explained the rationale behind the guideline.  The “Respect in Reporting campaign” is a media justice campaign to advocate building a mechanism to keep different kinds of media accountable for their reports of low-income communities.
  • Cara also showed us the current structure of the wordpress website that PPTV will use in the campaign.  PPTV has designed a rough mock-up page for the campaign. They have one graphic designer and Cara will manage the website.
• The MIT team, Cara and Nicole then discussed what we shall do next. MIT team will organize workshop 2 for youth on next Wednesday (11th). Cara will assist to invite youth to participate in the workshop. MIT team will meet Monday 10 at Harvard squire to finalize the contents for the workshop. Cara will launch the wordpress website and will set up google analytic for the website.